永浴爱河

永浴爱河
When we first arrived at the Botanical Gardens for our last outing, I spotted these two ducks right in the middle of Symphony Lake, just nicely lit by a spot of warm sunlight. They were unfortunately out of the full reach of my 70-200mm f/4 L for me to take any close-up shots. I decided to adopt a wider perspective approach instead, composing the ducks against the surounding water and the background of lotus flowers. I did partial metering on the ducks, which helped to throw the surrounding background into a nice, deep colour. I have done further post-processing in Photoshop to darken and slightly desaturate the background of lotus flowers. I think this picture will look good as a super-large print hung on a wall — there are lots of details here missing in this version resized for the web 🙂

The title for this one was contributed by CY’s mum 🙂 To those who can’t read Chinese, it means literally “forever bathed in the river of love“.

A Moment To Share

A Moment To Share
A break from the close-up / nature shots for a change…

These were part of the group of junior college students that came with us on a trip to the Botanical Gardens last Sunday. While some were still busy taking pictures around the area, this group decided to take a break to ask for some pointers from my dad. I took the opportunity to squeeze off a shot of this candid moment 🙂

Note: If you are one of the junior college students who joined the trip, do contact me or my dad if you need to discuss on the pictures you took during the session!

Spring Splendour

Spring Splendour
Although we do not have the four seasons here in Singapore (it’s either rain or shine here, with the weather humid throughout the whole year :P), the splendour of spring seems to be in full swing currently at the Botanical Gardens, at least by the Symphony Lake. After my initial visit 2 weeks ago, my repeat visit over the weekend saw the pond filled full of water hyacinths and lotus blooms. I managed to find this particular lotus flower isolated nicely by the morning light. Using partial metering on the flower, the rest of the background was thrown into a nice rich and dark green, emphasizing the flower as the main subject in the frame.